Pre-surgery experience

After almost 29 years with no in-patient experience in the hospital, I finally got the experience after all. Not with a minor disease or something more happy joy feelings in the end after delivering baby for example. No..not at all. My first experience of course had to be a surgery...

Imagine how I felt. Scared...that's for sure. Knowing your belly would be cut open at one point, it really..really..frightened me. Not about the pain, because obviously I wouldn't feel any pain. Not with all the anesthesia that the surgeon will give me. Nope.

I don't know really what frightened me, but consciously coming to the hospital to have a surgery...that's one thing I have never imagined doing, healthy or not. I would imagine, if I am to have a surgery, is that I'm unconscious and really in pain that there's no other option than to cut me open. A matter of life and death. Coming in healthy and going out in pain is not my idea of hospitalization. But...again, I have no choice. At some point in my life, it has to be done. So why not do it earlier.

I just really hope it wasn't too late......

Portabello Mushroom

The first time I tasted this mushroom was in UK few years back. The classic English breakfast was egg, toasted bread, tomato, and mushroom. Well at least these were the ones they can offer us in the hotel restaurant, such a small hotel it was. And since I tried the mushroom for the first time, I fell in love with the rich taste. I didn't know what kind of mushroom they fried midly with just a little bit of cooking oil, but I ordered it every morning since then.

Few months ago, after I have got chance to finally work in a big city with supermarket that supplies western foods, and finally got a chance to think what I want to cook at home, I found these different sorts of mushrooms. And finally I found this portabello mushroom. Just out of curiousity, I bought it, and try to cook it. Really I was mesmerized by the fact that it has the same taste as the mushrooms back there in UK. So this is the one, I thought. Portabello...woww...I've never realized.

So now, this mushroom become one of the must buy items whenever I go shopping in this supermarket. And it also become one of my routine breakfast menu in the weekends. Well, just because I had more time to cook it. Too bad my husband doesn't really like it. Except if it was smeared on top of a beef steak of course, such a steak lover as he is.

Deepavali Holiday

What this day really meant to me is actually that today is a holiday!!! Horeee.... And finally, I got to swim again after a whole month of swimming forbidding in the fasting month. Well that was over a month ago, so why I didn't start earlier?

Hmm...the major delay here is because I keep contemplating the perfect weather to swim. The best condition is when the sun shines brightly that makes the water quite warm. Now when you're staying in KL this time of year, you will rarely find this kind of weather in the afternoon or after work hours. More often than not, the day will be cloudy or even raining. Not really a good time to swim, at least for me. I rather curl in the warmth of my condo than freeze in the water.



But today was the the day, and really wonderful it was. How I missed swimming. Especially since I have managed to get the strokes right. How you can enjoy swimming in a daylight. Hmm...despite the fact that I can't really master the floating movement, but hey...I can enjoy swimming already.

Right..enough on my swimming joy. I was thinking to talk about this Deepavali thing. So..what I know about this Indian celebration is that it's a celebration of light. What does it means ? I have really no idea. But for sure, I won't know that they celebrate this day if I'm only to live in my country. We had enough celebrations to share the holidays, what's another celebration of light?

To prove the point of this whole light thingy, I can easily bet that last midnight, the Indian populations in KL will surely welcome it with fireworks. And fireworks indeed can be seen all across KL. That's the beauty of having to stay in 18th floor. You can enjoy most of the fireworks shooting into the sky from several nodes across the town clearly without any other high rise building to cover the view. You would also definitely notice it because of their explosion sounds.

Have a nice Deepavali holiday everyone !!

The unique Indian decoration to welcome Deepavali

Commitment

What I mean here is how I commit to update this blog :p As you all might notice, I haven't manage to write anything more since...hmm..let me think...3 months ??? Fiuuhh...that long without realizing it. Time flew by so fast...or not, but for sure, I didn't have time or rather mood to write anything at all.

This is how an office life changes a creative mind to become dull..huhh... The thing is, if I ever got any free time outside work, I'd rather spend it by not opening my laptop at all. Better to rest my eyes for the limited time before I have to start staring at the monitor again for at least 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

To be honest, I'm quite thankful for only having to work 5 days a week. Imagine if I have to do that same thing for additional one day. When will I do other activities ? Not that I have plenty at the moment. That's why I manage to start writing again. But still...I rather spend my spare time with my husband. If only he is not doing his own work at this very moment, most probably I wouldn't be opening this exact page and start typing anything that pops up in my mind.

Well..and also despite the fact that it's already very late at night and jumping into the swimming pool would be out of the question. If this is sunny weekend afternoon, I would rather swim and practice my strokes than practice my ten fingers typing skills.

Reminds me of the holiday tomorrow. Hopefully the sun will shine brightly. I hate to imagine feeling cold before I even touch the pool water. Not that it stopped me before from jumping into the water, but with a perfect weather, it's always better.

Scuba Diving Experience in Tioman Island - Part 3

Saturday, 28 July 2007

The day was started with breakfast, followed by a short briefing and then we went straight to the water again to do the second confined water training. More skills to practice in the deeper water.

The first session wasn't ended before we got a glimpse of an open water diving experience. We just dived to the deeper water approx 10m only, just to get to apply the skills we have just learned. Breathing through regulator, controlling our buoyancy to stay few feet above the sea bed, and learned how to move. Really...I would say...priceless experience. We haven't seen all the beauty that the corals can offer, but hey...we saw a clown fish :)

The second session that day was another confined water training, but this time it ended with longer open water diving. We went further away from the beach with water depth of 15m. More coral lifes were seen, more fishes, and for sure, more excitement. One morry eel was seen, more clown fish, anemons, and lots and lots of fish swimming around us.

The night again was enjoyed the same way as previous night, with additional barbeque dinner, more of the class session, and fire party by the beach, which honestly I didn't really bother to attend. I was really exhausted by the day's activity, and I fell asleep as soon I reached the pillow.



Sunday, 29 July 2007

The last day and the most exciting divings we were about to experience, at least so far in our early adventure of scuba diving. We were to do boat diving this time. Not only one, but two. The advantage of this is that we don't need to carry the tanks on our back all the way from the beach. The tanks are already on the boat, and what we need to do is just carry our other equipments in a bag. We will don everything once we arrived in the diving site.




The first dive site for our boat diving is Batu Malang. Why they call it 'batu' or rock, well because it's just a very small island along the other coast of the bay. But it has the most beautiful coral reefs surrounding the island wall underwater. So to be expected, we were to dive along this wall clockwise to finally ascend back to the surface close to the boat.

We then started to descend along a line from the boat. The water was so clear, you won't be able to sense the depth of the sea without the depth gauge, which showed approx 18m. But since the water was so clear, the sun managed to light up the corals down under. Even from the surface, we can just snorkel and look into the corals. Of course it won't be the same feeling as if you're just few feet above or beside the corals.

Very intoxicating!! The clown fish were all over the blue anemons, the colour contrast was so perfect. And one of them actually bit my husband's finger when he tried to touch them lightly. Haha..who asked you to touch any of them, as we're not suppose to touch or disturb the coral lifes.

The real funny thing was that my husband couldn't control his buoyancy yet, so what happened to him? At a time he went up, and in the other time he suddenly landed in the sea floor like a morry eel trying to return back to its hole...hahahaha....how exhilirating to watch him, one of the coral reef habitants :p. There's also one point when he suddenly caught his attention with some fish that made his direction deflect further away from the rest of the group, and the intructor had to get his attention back and drag him to the rest of us. Hehehe....

The second boat dive was just in Salang Bay, closer to the beach. If we have the energy, we can actually swim back to the beach. The depth here was 15m, and the corals were a different type. I called them cabbage corals since they look just like a cabbage. If we're lucky, we might see turtles here, but unfortunately none of them showed up.

But hey, I had my other amusement here, which again was my husband. He can't see very clearly without his glasses, and he refused to use contact lenses. So once again he got lost. His buoyancy was much better this time, but at the end of our dive, when we were about to ascend back to the surface, we met other diver's group who were about to take group picture. And somehow, he stopped close to them, seem very eager to get photographed as well I assumed. I was waiting for him to realize that it wasn't our group at all...hehehe... After few minutes, he finally saw us and swam to us. I was about to burst laughing outloud, but my mouth was full with this regulator. Well..didn't mean I couldn't smile wide at him :p His only excuse when we were back at the surface was that he thought one of them was me. That's why you need to use contact lenses my dear....

The dive was ended with another show of emergency skill that we need to master, then finally we all passed the assessment and certified by PADI.

Now it's time to go back to town. After we packed all of our things, bought few souvenirs, we headed to the dock, and waited for the boat that would come at 4pm. But we only got to the boat by 5pm with the weather getting worst and worst. Luckily I got the rear seat. After lots of experiences in a crew boat back there in Balikpapan that brought us back and to the rig, I realized that the best seat in rough weather is at the rear. The further away from the head of the boat is better.

Then the excitement has to end, with another 5 hours driving ahead of us to return back to KL. Hmmm....enjoy the ride!!!